BATTERY ISSUES

This thing had SEVERAL bad batches of TI branded batteries that went out early on. The fix, if it can be applied, boils down to two parts.

Software

Firmware

SOFTWARE UPDATING

For the software, just keep your OS up to date. That simple.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

FIRMWARE UPDATING

For the firmware, this is where things can go sour fast if the battery is toast. Source material links will be below. The following steps can be used to get the battery back into operation as it should be.

UPDATE : Contact PiTop if there are any battery problems. There are early batteries for G1, G2 PiTops that were flaky, and the issue has been nailed down and fixed. In some cases, this means a replacement battery. If the firmware update doesnt work, contact PiTop directly.

If you haven't already done so, get the battery monitor for LXDE. This will help see what is going on. To do so, open up a terminal and issue the following commands:

Update the firmware
Run the following command repeatedly, and aim to stop only after 5-10 successful patches. The repeated attempts are due to the way that the Pi interfaces over i2c. This is from the Pi Top team's mouth.

sudo ./pt-battery-fw-update -d

ZRAM

ZRAM is a form of memory compression for Linux kernels to use when managing RAM. This is similar to the old RAM doublers for Windows back in the day. Some performance gains, but it is very hit and miss if you get much out of it. My attitude is why not? Its free, unlike the old Windows crapware.

Below in the references section are both my source of this particular script, and a link to the Wikipedia article on what ZRAM is.

To accomplish this on a Pi3 based Pi Top, create the following shell script (zram.sh), and run it (copy/paste is the easiest here):